Past Lives might not put the perfect, storybook ending right up on screen, but if you’re Celine Song, the whole thing must have felt like a fairy tale. Every artist, no matter the medium or genre, dreams of making something that genuinely moves their audience, chasing that lofty goal from one project to the next, but the writer/director’s 2023 debut feature managed to get there on her first try. As if the trail of used tissues and Oscar nominations weren’t enough, the movie left in its wake a tantalizing open question as to what could be next for someone with such a knack for locating emotional nerve endings. It’s a different proposition than simply following up an admired and well-regarded offering; when it comes to matters of the heart, the stakes tend to be higher. The long arc of history affords both the benefit of hindsight, and the ability to interpret an individual’s catalogue in its entirety, each entry as a star in a larger cosmos. Song only has the sun so far, and if wanting her to simply make another glowing treasure with a gravitational pull is a fool’s gambit, you can call us all idiots.

Zagging when the masses are expecting you to zig is a tried-and-true artistic maneuver, a plea for depressurization that doubles as a statement of more varied intent, and Song is clearly weary of being boxed in by our expectations. Rather than mounting another thought-provoking, delicately conducted tear jerker, her latest decamps to the abandoned land of Romantic Comedies, with Materialists employing the tricks of an entirely different trade. Dakota Johnson headlines as Lucy, the star employee of a New York matchmaking service, and if the location and the gig don’t put you in a 90’s/2000’s Julia Roberts/Kate Hudson state of mind, the aspirational wardrobing will. Determined to never marry unless some pretty lofty financial standards are met, Lucy unwittingly finds herself at the center of a love triangle, with debonair financier Harry (Pedro Pascal) at one end, and her dreamy, strapped-for-cash ex John (Chris Evans) at the other. 

Pitting true love and fiscal freedom against each other in a battle with a seemingly foregone conclusion is a time-honored tradition, and Song’s newest feature is defined by the way she capitulates to some familiar cliches while bending others to her purpose. Reading the script must feel like slipping straight into our recent cinematic past, decked out in all the romantic antagonism and luxurious big city living that used to be the coin of the realm, complete with charmingly over-written monologues trained on the intersection between affection and commerce. Materialists has all the markers of a proper throwback effort, but the tone is pure A24, the silliness to which we’re all accustomed choked out in favor of beatific lensing and a ruminative sense of prestige. It’s about time someone dusted off the old playbook, but pantomiming the movements isn’t the same as embodying them, and with all this stylistic and ideological elevation, the initial template is almost unrecognizable.

Squint hard enough and you can see it in the opening passage, largely comprised of a multi-faceted wedding sequence that introduces our players in an invitingly typical, swoon-worthy fashion. They may be beautiful, but what’s beneath the skin is vapid and rotten, reducing modern courtship to a series of numbers and qualifications that blissfully adheres to standard operating procedure. In order to arrive at the foot-popping final kiss, the protagonists in the field are usually fitted with cruel, protective exteriors that are whittled down through the first pair of acts, and Materialists is at its best when its own behavior is at its worst. Whether chiding the unrealistic expectations of Lucy’s clientele, or observing the superficial frenzy of the wedding industrial complex, Song is playfully sharp elbowed. It’s the softening that evades her grasp.

Part of this is casting, though you wouldn’t know it from those initial frames, which expertly weaponize aspects of Johnson that have confounded other filmmakers. The chilly remove of her on screen persona that doesn’t make for good chemistry with ostensible equals, but works swimmingly when positioned as a vindictive god of love, moving pieces around the board with a frigid meticulousness. Most Rom Com heroines exude an essential goodness that’s haphazardly submerged for the first hour of bad decisions and hurt feelings. Johnson inverts the formula, and while the novelty, when paired with crisp writing, makes the opening salvo sing, Materialists suffers greatly for her inability to corral the audience into her corner down the home stretch. It also exacerbates the movie’s cold blooded pacing and aesthetic, the potential for welcome frivolity sacrificed at the altar of noble repute. There’s nothing wrong with a bistro cheeseburger, but the lower end stuff is also welcome, and Song seems oblivious to the intrinsic appeal of a greasy non-delicacy.

One way to avoid the qualitative drop off of the second half would be to trim things up a bit, but Materialists sprints in the opposite direction, unspooling over an interminable 116 minutes. While never less than passably engaging, the bloated runtime allows you to catch the movie dead in its tracks, unpacking every potential mystery and discovery until there’s nothing left to project or parse. A late turn toward real life trauma is the exception that proves the rule; empathy and interrogation are fires in need of persistent tending, and we’ve already taken our thinking caps off by the time it’s unveiled. All that’s left is the grandstanding speech, and by the time it’s over, you’re left wondering how the fun and fizz of the first hour could possibly feel so distant.

Turns out reverie was never a priority here, a pecking order that’s clarified by giving actors with such easy-going charm as Pascal and Evans so little to work with. They go through the motions and look great doing it, but their smirking charisma feels purposely blotted out by a movie that’s averse to breeziness. Song’s desire to lighten things up a bit is understandable, but early returns suggest a helmer incapable of molding brain-off entertainment. Romantic Comedies don’t need to be stupid, but they do require a sense of merriment that Materialists all but banishes after a short while. The dark, frothy comedy of the beginning shows us a director that’s capable of more than intricate melodrama, and given Song’s preternatural storytelling gifts, there’s a chance this one develops a quasi-cult following over time, though the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of Past Lives is wholly absent. Our higher brain functions know that this is all part of the process, some starts and stops along the way as a potential great searches for firmer footing. It’s just tough when feelings get involved.